Assassin's Creed Valhalla

2022-06-??
I started to play this game last week for the first time and I was so so excited after playing Odyssey for 60 hours or whatever and even after only ~20 hours I wasn't loving it.

I was excited for the village building but turns out it’s just a mechanic to dump more grindable resources into so you can…turn in more grindable resources (animal parts, artifacts, etc). By the end of the game this never changed

I was excited for “better combat” but it seems basically the same? Maybe it feels slightly more weighty but it's still not good. And you're basically fighting the same couple of enemies for the entirety of your 60 hour playthrough or whatever.

I was excited for this game’s version of the Cult of Kosmos but I dunno if I burned out on it in Odyssey but it’s basically the same and kind of boring.

I will say the world is absurdly gorgeous and it’s been a real showing of what my PS5 can do. I like all the Viking and old Anglo Saxon culture and buildings. I’m nominally engaged in the story (minus the modern day stuff which makes no sense to me and I don’t care about).

And the story is actually pretty funny in how wack it gets with them living in some sort of simulation to the Assassin guy helping you maybe being evil and "escaping" from being trapped in the simulation... It's more Assassin's Creed bullshit I can't follow.

I think the biggest problem with the game though is its length. It'd be great for a 20 hour, maybe 30 hour game. But for 40+ hours it really started to drag on and it's revealed for how little of an incremental improvement it is over AC Odyssey.